printing and clerical labour it is obvious that the necessity for sending repeated requests by post makes a serious hole in a subscription of half a guinea.

The End of "On Change."

Another historic institution disappears, at all events for the present, with the decision to discontinue, as from the beginning of the current year, the "post days" on the Royal Exchange. These "post days," relics of the days when foreign mails were despatched only twice a week, were Tuesdays and Thursdays, on which it has been the practice, for how long we are unable to say, for merchants, exchange brokers and foreign bankers to meet in the Royal Exchange for dealings in foreign bills and foreign exchange, the list of resultant prices being published in the following morning's papers under the heading London Course of Exchange.'

Even before the war these meetings were of only minor importance, and recent events and the institution of private telephone lines between the principal foreign exchange banks and exchange brokers, have combined to render such leisurely proceedings altogether out of date.

Economy in Office Arrangement.

Mr. Minty's remarks on pp. 50-57 upon the necessity for an economical arrangement of the floor space of a large banking office will no doubt find a sympathetic reception in many quarters. Many of the Head Offices in the neighbourhood of Lombard Street, formed by adding fresh houses to an original building by knocking holes in party walls and running up additional staircases, are a serious obstacle to efficient office control, and there is a crying need for rebuilding. But there are many difficulties in the way, for apart from the high cost of building operations, it is next to impossible to find a temporary refuge while the process is carried out.

of

When, however, Mr. Minty approves the American type of a single large room, with low tables and no partitions, in which principals and subordinates all find room, he is on debatable ground. There is one great objection to the American type banking office, and that is, the noise. Englishmen who have worked in banks arranged on the American plan, especially if they occupy a position of responsibility, find the noise a serious handicap, and, if we may judge from the attention paid in the United States to devices for deadening sound in office buildings, it may safely be

assumed that Americans are equally alive to this disadvantage. Modern conditions impose a heavy strain on the nerves of men who have to make hurried decisions involving heavy responsibility, and everything should be done to make the conditions under which they work as easy as is consistent with efficiency. Perhaps the noise of American offices is one of the contributing causes to the cry of "too old at forty," which we believe originated on the other side of the Atlantic.

An experienced banker recently remarked to the writer that he was thunderstruck to learn from a published answer to a question

Endorsing a Bill

for the Security

of the Payee.

set in the Institute's Associate Examination last April, that if a bank is the holder of a bill of exchange or promissory note payable to its own order and obtains the endorsement of a third party to strengthen its security, the third party is not liable to the bank upon its endorsement. Repeated decisions of the Courts, however, have made this quite clear, and a little consideration will show that the attitude of the Courts is reasonable.

An endorser, by endorsing a bill, engages to compensate a subsequent endorser if the bill is dishonoured. But if the bank endorses the bill as payee before obtaining the stiffening endorsement, the bank is a prior endorser and has no recourse against the surety who endorsed the bill subsequently. If, however, the bank obtains the surety's signature on the bill before itself endorsing it, it has been held that the bank are not holders in due course because when they take the bill from the surety with his endorsement upon it, it is not "complete and regular on the face of it," being minus the payee's endorsement.

If, therefore, the bank wishes to establish the liability of the surety it cannot sue him on the bill, but must produce evidence of a contract of suretyship, which, by the Statute of Frauds, must be in writing. In such circumstances therefore the bank, when obtaining the stiffening endorsement, should either get, at the same time, a letter acknowledging the endorser's liability to the bank in case of the dishonour of the bill, or should have a statement to this effect written on the bill and signed by the surety.

OFFICE ORGANISATION AND LABOUR SAVING

APPLIANCES.

By L. LE M. MINTY, Cert. A.I.B., B.Sc.

1. The General Arrangement of the Office.

ON entering the head office of a large American bank and the head office of an English bank, the difference in the general appearance of the two which will strike us most is that whereas the American bank presents to view a number of flat tables and low chairs set out horizontally without any dividing partitions, so that the manager can look from one end of the office to the other, the office of the English bank seems to be partitioned off into as many mahogany boxes as there are heads and sub-heads of departments.

Now experience has taught the business men in America that theirs is the better plan. In America the work of organisation is undertaken by an expert brought in from outside, to whom is explained what is wanted, and he is made responsible for the success of the scheme of office arrangement as a whole.

In England the arrangement of the office is left to the discretion of the head of each department who, as is natural, arranges everything to suit his individual needs.

As a consequence some departments of an English bank get pushed into quite undesirable corners of the building and other sections of the office are allotted valuable space for which they appear to have no adequate need.

Of course, it is extremely desirable that independent offices should be kept independent. It is poor management to have a bullion office where large bundles of notes and boxes of coin are counted in a thoroughfare between two other departments. On the other hand it has been proved that it is a waste of valuable space to divide up by wooden partitions what is essentially one office. The manager's room in an English bank is too frequently a Bluebeard's cupboard out of which the occupant glides at unexpected intervals. The most efficient supervision can be exercised where the manager can look down the whole office at any time and whenever he likes. The staff are much more attentive to the supervision of a manager if they know that he may be watching their activities at any moment.

More important, however, than supervision is the question of economy of floor space. Consider the following typical experience. Finding that his clerks were inconveniently huddled together for

want of room, the manager of one head office went to the expense of having galleries built all round the ground floor of his office so as to increase the space available. Besides blocking out the light and interfering with the ventilation it was found that when the improvements were completed, everyone felt more cramped than before. The reason for this was that, although before the alterations the clerks were huddled together, they had few occasions to leave their stools. After the construction of the "rabbit hutches there was a continual procession of clerks up and down the stairs to the galleries carrying books and papers. Everyone felt that he was more than ever in the way of everyone else. The most expensive feature of the system of dividing up an office into a number of mahogany boxes is that it is totally inelastic and when business increases and alterations have to be made, a complete reconstruction has to be undertaken. In a large office kept as a long room without division from end to end, departments can be reorganised merely by making a new distribution of tables and seats. Everyone who has worked in the head office of a large joint stock bank appreciates the discomfort he has felt in having to clerk among carpenters' ladders and scaffolding in an atmosphere of dust and drying paint during the time that offices constructed a few months previously are all being pulled down only to be built up a little different again. Of course, the economy of space is an urgent problem which one bank has solved by employing double shifts of staff. The view put forward here is that the division of space should be made, if not as in the United States by an outside expert, at least by some higher official who appreciates the needs of the office as a whole. Individual heads of departments should never be allowed to interfere with the general system of economy of floor space by having their boxes built near the fireplace, and so forth, to suit their individual convenience but regardless of how they spoil the general arrangement.

The next problem of efficient mechanical organisation is to have inter-related departments conveniently near one another. Office appliances should be situated within easy reach of those who use them. Thus it is obviously ridiculous to have a correspondents' department on one side of an office and the copying press on the other. Most persons realise that one of the secrets of efficient clerking is the art of keeping the desk clear of encumbrances. For this reason most desks have or should have a metal rest upon which books not in immediate use can be placed. Similarly, there should be a proper wooden holder for ledgers immediately under the desk. Few persons will take the trouble to put ledgers in their proper place if they have to walk from one end of an office to the other every time they wish to refer to them. Experience shows that the most usual way in which cheques or papers are lost is for

them to get shut up in some book which has been brought in from some other department and taken away some time later. The secret of keeping books in their place is to insist that persons who wish to consult books shall leave their places to consult them. The books while kept in the most convenient place should not be taken out of the office. Men can walk back to their accustomed places. Books lie where they are until someone fetches them. It is deliberately courting trouble to allow men to walk from one office to another with bundles of papers and cheques in their hands which they are at liberty to lay down for a time anywhere while they machine other bundles or otherwise busy themselves until they come back.

2. Time Saving Appliances and their Effects.

The different types of books and mechanical contrivances in use is properly not a subject which is included under organisation. It may, however, be mentioned that American banks in particular are much ahead of us in the use of office appliances, and it should be the duty of those charged with the work of organisation to see that suitable labour saving appliances are available for the use of the staff. Card and loose leaf systems of ledgers have been in use among commercial firms in England for some time, and the managers would be wise to consider how far they can be conveniently employed in banks. Generally speaking, card systems of ledger keeping have become popular mainly among commercial firms where the vouchers recording transactions the day before are not posted until the day after, and the whole of the vouchers are received at the beginning of the day. In this way such firms are able to employ a large junior staff who sort out the vouchers and place them under the corresponding cards taken once from the card drawers. The posting is done independently by a senior man, who has thus the drudgery of his work performed by junior labour. The firm economises in the salary of about the same number of senior men who would otherwise do the work of the junior staff. Card systems are not likely to be of much service in banks for ledgers because the posting is done throughout the day in small batches of vouchers, and it would be quite impracticable to pull out one card at a time, make one posting to it, and put it back and take out another. A great deal, however, can be said in favour of the employment of loose leaf ledgers in banks. The ordinary advantages which can be claimed for loose leaf ledgers are, that there is no need for an alphabetical index, the leaves being in alphabetical order; that the current ledger need not be encumbered with dead accounts; that the work of posting statements or taking out balances can be distributed among many clerks on the same ledger. Besides these advantages-which are